Resumo

BALDERRAMA F, Fausto A. The Uyuni salt lake. Rev. Met. UTO [online]. 2012, n.31, pp. 5-11. ISSN 2078-5593.

The Uyuni salt lake is the biggest salt crust around the world. Its length is approximately 10,000 km2. This salt crust is formed of porous halite, filled of a interstitial brine rich in lithium, potassium, magnesium and boron. Perforations made in the Uyuni salt lake show that it's formed by interstitial layers of porous halite filled of a brine rich in lithium, potassium, boron and magnesium. The deepest perforation made until now in the Uyuni salt lake has 220.6 meters. It's still unknown the total depth of the salt lake. Based on 40 perforations made in the first crust, which has a average thickness of 44.7 m, a estimation of a reserve composed by 8.9 millions of lithium tons and 194 millions of potassium tons was made.There aren't enough perforations in the rest of thesaline crusts to quantify the total lithium and potassium reserves, but it's supposed that they are huge

Palavras-chave : Uyuni salt lake; reserve; lithium; potassium.